Best alternative for cancer patients

Radiation Oncology Centre defends colleague

THE EDITOR, SIR:

We refer to your headline of Sunday, January 15, 2012 'Cancer-treatment CONFLICT - Gov'ernment physicist gets contract to treat patients at his private practice', and the associated article.

The headline and article have attracted significant comments, both locally and internationally. As they have the potential to undermine the reputation of Dr Collie Miller, the medical physicist referred to, and also the potential for collateral damage to the reputation of The Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited, we use this opportunity to state the facts as we know them to be.

The company, X-ray and Diagnostic Ultrasound Consultants Limited, is the principal shareholder of the Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited. Dr Collie Miller is a shareholder of the Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited and has been its managing director since its inception in the year 2001.

Dr Miller is not a medical practitioner as stated in the article; he is a medical physicist. As a medical physicist, Dr Miller's role is to provide expert advice on the safe utilisation of radiation and radiation technologies used for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes and to provide consultation on the optimisation of radiation treatment procedures. He does not consult with, examine, refer or prescribe treatment for patients at any institution, whether public or private.

Dr Miller's relationship with the Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica has never been a secret and has been known throughout the Ministry of Health for the last 10 years. Dr Miller has, above all, been an advocate for public/private partnership for the delivery of radiation-therapy care in Jamaica.

Nevertheless, throughout the years, Dr Miller, as managing director of The Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited, has assisted patients from the public sector whom their doctors deem would be more ideally treated using the more advanced linear accelerator technology which we employ. This has been accomplished by the offer of massive discounts to the Ministry of Health.

On the matter of conflict of interest, the fact is that the public sector regularly refers patients to private institutions - X-ray facilities, dialysis facilities, etc, where, oftentimes, the patients encounter and are treated by doctors who are also employed in the public sector and who also treat them in that sector.

The entire matter should be viewed in the context that The Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited is the only alternative-treatment facility in the island. If in this emergency situation, of a breakdown of the government service, The Radiation Oncology Centre is not engaged, what hope would there be for patients whose treatment has been disrupted?

The Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited is capable of and willing to enter into a public/private partnership with the Ministry of Health to extend this service to its public patients, given the long waiting list at the Kingston Public Hospital which sees many patients waiting, we understand, for over a year, to access treatment.

Finally, on the matter of fees: For the first cohort of patients, The Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited has markedly discounted the fee to $9.9 million.

This was not the result of a process of negotiation, but was a simple offer to expedite care for the patients who are caught in this crisis.

DR WINSTON (FREDDIE) CLARKE

Chairman, The Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica Limited